


Didn't Anyone Tell You How To Gracefully Disappear In a Room?

by Magnetism_bind



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Idiots in Love, M/M, Some angst, but mostly not, defending ur loved ones, too many feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 07:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10940268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnetism_bind/pseuds/Magnetism_bind
Summary: For the tumblr prompt "I wanted to completely disappear for flinthamilton?"





	Didn't Anyone Tell You How To Gracefully Disappear In a Room?

James flexes his knuckles, eyeing them with a sigh. They’re very clearly bruised, and it’s equally obvious how it happened so he simply keeps his hands out of sight for most of the day, and he thinks he’s gotten away with it.

It’s not till nearly the end of the afternoon that he forgets and points out something on the map to Thomas as they’re speaking of his plans for Nassau.

Thomas doesn’t respond immediately and James looks at him. “Is something wrong, my lord?”

“Your hand…”

James curls his hand to a fist, dropping it at once, but it’s too late.

“May I?” Thomas asks softly. He reaches for James’s hand and James lets him. Thomas examines his knuckles carefully, his fingertips gentle on the bruised skin.

“I presume there was a reason for this.”

“Yes.” James says at last.

“Will you tell me?” Thomas looks up at him, his eyes intent on James’s face.

“No, my lord.” James lets the title put up a barricade between them.

“James.” Thomas simply cracks it with little more with a sigh. “Please don’t.”

“I couldn’t stand by and let them speak so.” James bursts out. He couldn’t. He has no regrets.

Thomas sighs again. “I understand your need to protect, your desire to defend, but at the cost of your own reputation…”

“I don’t give a damn about my reputation.” James pulls his hand away. “What kind of man would I be if I didn’t defend the people I lo…” He stops speaking suddenly, tightly cutting himself off before saying the word so nearly on the tip of his tongue. The word that is in his heart every hour of every day, threatening to come out every time he looks at Thomas, every time he speaks. Such a small word for the way he feels when he thinks about Thomas.

“You….” Thomas bites his lip and refrains from finishing whatever he was about to say. Instead he simply murmurs. “Thank you.”

“It was my honor.” James mutters.

They speak no more of it on that day, though the conversation is far from finished.

 *  *  *

“What in god’s name possessed you to invite that navy man?”

James pauses outside the door. He had excused himself from the company to take a message sent over from the admiralty, but now he hesitates over going back into the parlor. The voice of the man speaking belongs to one of Thomas’s acquaintances, a rather unpleasant gentleman named Richard Moore. James isn’t surprised or even bothered truly by his snobbery. He’s used to such insults; they don’t really touch him anymore. It’s Thomas’s response that interests him and why he lingers outside the door to hear it.

James listens as Thomas speaks. “I’ll thank you not to speak so poorly of a man much better suited to discuss the topics we’re speaking of you then you are, Moore.”

“Really, Hamilton, at times you go too far.”

“Lieutenant James McGraw is one of the finest men I know. And I would rather have him at my side than a hundred of London’s so called better men.” Thomas’s voice rings out strong and warm. James leans against the door, pressing his palm to the smooth polished wood of it, steadying himself, listening still in the dark of the corridor. “And you should know that, and take care to remember it while you’re in this house.”

The conversation turns to other things after that but James continues to linger in the hall until the others have gone and then he slips back inside the parlor.

“Where did you go?” Thomas asks as James comes over to him. “You missed the-“

James cuts off his words as he presses Thomas up against his desk, kissing him hard on the mouth, his hands pulling the wig from Thomas’s head and tossing it upon the desk.

“What was that for?” Thomas smiled at him. “Does the subject of social reform catch your interest so ardently, lieutenant?”

“It does when you speak of it, my lord.” James kisses his throat. “I heard you earlier.”

Thomas has the grace to blush so prettily that James has to kiss him again, so he does.

“They’re not fit to clean your boots.” Thomas whispers. “And I would have all of Whitehall, all of London know it.”

“Mmmm, you should definitely not tell them that.” James laughs.

*  *  *                                                

The first time James defends Thomas in the town they’ve settled in, Thomas has to hide his laughter until they’re well outside of the tavern.

“What?” James growls. He’s stalking along the road like he’s waiting for an attack to still come. It shouldn’t be this amusing, but somehow Thomas can’t stop laughing.

“You nearly frightened that poor man to death.”

“He was rude to you.”

“He was a busy man, not inclined to indulge two stupid old men mooning over each other.” Thomas smiles at him. “We had been there nearly two hours, James. He had other customers who wanted to drink.”

“You paid him more than enough for the time that we were there.” James mutters as they continue walking back to their cottage on the hill. “Then…did it embarrass you?”

“Of course not.” Thomas glances over at him. “Were you embarrassed?”

“No…not that time, not now.” James shakes his head. “It’s curious. I’d been thinking on that for some time though.”

He stops walking, and Thomas does as well. They’re standing there in the middle of the road, halfway up the hill. James can see the lamp they left burning in the window of their cottage. Their home, waiting for them to return to it.

Thomas waits, and at last James continues speaking.

“There were times that I wanted to completely disappear. From the shame that overwhelmed me. From the fear that everything I was, was….wrong. For the years we were apart, I refused to let that shame and fear reach me, but it was still there, in the back of my head, beating against my mind like a drum I couldn’t stop hearing. And now it’s as though….I have no energy left for that heaviness of thought, no strength for that fear anymore, no need to listen to that drum. ” He leans in and brushes his thumb over Thomas’s jaw. “I have only strength for you.”

“That’s good. Because I require all of it.” Thomas nuzzles at his ear. 

They kiss there in the middle of the road, languidly, letting the heat catch and flare between their bodies until James’s limbs are weak with desire and his hands can’t stop pulling Thomas closer. Only then Thomas does James by the hand and they walk together up the hill to home. 


End file.
